Fatboy Slim has described his alcohol addiction as a “parasite” and said that getting sober was “probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done”. The 62-year-old musician, whose real name is Norman Quentin Cook, also opened up about struggling with anxiety after returning to performing post-rehab, saying he was “paralysed” and “rigid with fear”.
Cook checked into a rehab facility in 2009 to battle his alcoholism and has now been sober for almost 15 years. He shared his story on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs with Lauren Laverne.
Wake-Up Moment from Zoe Ball
Cook revealed that his then-wife, radio DJ Zoe Ball, prompted him to address his drinking by quietly saying she would leave him if he did not stop. He said: “That was my wake-up moment. There had been tons of people shouting at me before, but it was whispered very quietly in the end.”
He described addiction as a “weird disease” and “like a parasite, it protects its own. It knows that if you quit, it won’t have anywhere to live anymore, so it will do things to you to keep you.” He added that in the last year of his drinking, he wasn't enjoying it and “things were starting to fall off in my life.”
While in rehab, he realised he had sought help “just in time”. When asked if becoming sober was easy, he replied: “No, absolutely not. Probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I couldn’t have done it without going to rehab. I needed someone to bash into my head for a month. You know, ‘you’ll die, and you’ll be in misery if you don’t stop doing this’.”
Struggling with Anxiety on Stage
The DJ admitted that returning to the stage caused him anxiety, saying it “took about five shows” to adapt to performing sober. He said: “For the first five shows, I was so paralysed and rigid with fear, I couldn’t dance, and I couldn’t enjoy it. I was thinking, what are you actually doing? Why are you going to play that record next? And why are they going to react to it?”
A “beautiful night in Japan” helped him overcome his fears, as the crowd was “just really excitable”, making him realise his job is about making the crowd happy. “Everything sort of fitted into place,” he added.
School Days with Sir Keir Starmer
Cook also spoke about attending school with Sir Keir Starmer, being in the same form as him for five years before watching his rise to UK Prime Minister. During those school days, he went by the name Quentin but received a lot of flack for it. He said: “You have to understand that before Quentin Tarantino in the late 60s and the early 70s, the only Quentin in people’s consciousness was England’s most celebrated homosexual, Quentin Crisp. So having the same name as him going through school was, you know, I got a lot of flack.”
He added: “My nan still couldn’t spell it to her dying day, she couldn’t spell it or pronounce it, and it was just a weird name, and it was a stupid name, and so when I joined a band, then you get a chance to reinvent yourself. So it’s like the first thing I’m going to do is change my name. I’d grown up with a flamboyant, unusual name, and I just wanted a really normal name. So Normal Norman just had a good ring to it.”
Career Highlights
Cook rose to prominence in the 1990s with club hits such as Praise You, The Rockafeller Skank and Right Here Right Now. He has received six Grammy nominations and won the 2002 Best Music Video award for Weapon Of Choice, which features Hollywood actor Christopher Walken dancing through a deserted hotel lobby.
The full Desert Island Discs episode is available on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4 from Sunday at 10am.
